Student Leaders

 

In the earliest years, 1968 and 1969, the leaders were few but they ran into good luck from the beginning. The Macy Foundation was looking to jump into the risky business of health care access, and bumped into Bill Dow, Pat Maxwell, Janice Ambry, Rod Lorenz--students in the moment or newly-minted health care providers, eager for a project. Their introduction was facilitated by an aging department head with a heart of gold: Dr. Amos Christie.  And then suddenly the next year over 70 students were involved. After that, even more.  

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Students were always in charge--or put more accurately, advice from most elders held little sway. It was students who scouted for communities. Students who built bridges with community leaders. Students who interviewed each other for summer jobs.  They designed orientation.  They procured supplies for the health fairs.  They developed training classes.  Which in those days included teaching medical and nursing students how to do something that was highly illegal:  conducting physical exams without a license to practice.  They were creative, energetic, and irreverent.  Not without conflict. They seemed congenitally incapable of structure.  Everything was a democracy.  How did they do it. Maybe it was their energy alone, the fierce energy of young hormones, the infectious anti-establishment of the times, the drugs, the alcohol.  Although, now that I think of it, the only drink Bill Dow ever took was an accidental Long Island Iced Tea.  His first was his last.